Coaching and Care of Athletes

COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES to represent Great Britain at the Olympic Games held in London in I908. The javelins we then had were terribly unwieldy, being made of ash, with very thin whipcord bindings and exceedingly heavy metal heads, which put the balance all wrong. The shafts were very whippy. There were two javelin-throwing contests at that Olym– piad, one in the now standard style, in which the javelin is held in the middle, and the other in free style. A. H. Fyffe, Oxford University~ won the orthodox event at I08 ft. 9 ins., while the late H. A. Leeke, Cambridge University, won the free-style trial at I35 ft. 3! ins. The 'free style' was very free indeed. On one occasion a wild Irishman was the first competitor on the list. He took the javelin by the tail, whirled it round his head, turned twice himself, and let fly with a shriek of enthusiasm. The javelin landed among the band, and went clean through the big drum. Not unnaturally the big drummer was annoyed, and broke the shaft across his knee. Thus the Irishman won the contest, because only one javelin had been provided. The other competitors did not get a chance to throw at all! At the Swedish Olympic trials of that year (I908) Lemming made a new world~s record of I88 ft., and in the Olympic Games of London took the free style at I 78 ft. 7!----ins. and the orthodox style at I 79 ft. 2! ins. / The first English javelin-throwing championship was instituted in I9I I by the ¥-nglish Amateur Field-events Association, and I won the title at I I8 ft. 4 ins., having entered to make up the field, but never before having thrown ajavelin. We were still, of course, using the whippy-shafted weapons, but the introduction of Arno Hohenthal's Finnish Sportarticles spears, the shafts of which are made . from the finest sun-side layer of the Finnish birch-tree, enabled me to get into the I 70 ft. class, while other people threw a great deal farther than that. The first American Championship, held in I909, pr.ovided a victory for the huge American shot-putter the late Ralph Rose, who stood 6 ft. 5 ins. and weighed over 20 stone. He threw I4I ft . 7 ins., and it has been said that he got this distance through brute force and beastly ignorance. Still, he was a grand shot– putter. Nowadays a throw of 200 ft. is first-class, but no more. The first man to beat that distance was J. J. Saaristo, Finland, who at 384